Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
International Sweater Vestival
Today is the International Sweater Vestival, also known as Sweater Vestival or the Festival of Sweater Vests. Always occurring on the first Friday of December—identified by some as the second Friday after Thanksgiving—it celebrates the sartorial splendor inherent in the collective donning of sweater vests. The first known mention of “Sweater Vestival” occurred in 2008 when Carolyn Johnson interviewed the […]
November 30 is Perpetual Youth Day
Today is Perpetual Youth Day, always celebrated on November 30th in honor of Dick Clark’s birthday. Although he’d been born in 1929, Clark appeared to age very little during the five decades of his career, earning him the nickname of “America’s oldest teenager.” In 1957, Clark hosted a local Philadelphia television show called Bandstand, which […]
Giving Tuesday
Giving Tuesday was created in 2012 by the U.N. Foundation in partnership with 92Y, and is always observed on the first Tuesday of December. Following on the heels of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, symbols of excessive retail spending, Giving Tuesday encourages us to show generosity to those in need. The campaign’s creators hoped that 50 […]
November 24 is D.B. Cooper Day
On November 24, 1971, a man who identified himself as Dan Cooper boarded a Northwest Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. He was wearing a suit, had no discernable accent, drank bourbon and soda and smoked several cigarettes. He also handed a flight attendant an exceedingly polite note informing her he had a […]
Black Friday
Today is called Black Friday because it’s said to be the day that retailers can finally mark their ledgers with black ink instead of red; that is, they begin to turn a profit. Black Friday suffers from mission creep: it starts earlier every year. While you’d think that having a particular day in the name […]
November 22 is Start Your Own Country Day
Today is Start Your Own Country Day. According to legend, it was introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City with the intention of honoring “those free-spirited souls who dared to hope and believe in a better world where they too could declare any land their own.” We’ve been unable to confirm that […]
November 21 is World Hello Day
November 21st is World Hello Day, also known as Greet Ten People for Peace. It was founded in 1973 by brothers Brian and Michael McCormack, university students at the time, in response to the Yom Kippur War. “We wanted to do something to celebrate the importance of personal communication to preserving peace,” Michael McCormack later explained. They wrote to world […]
November 17 is National Unfriend Day
On November 17, 2010, comedian and late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel inaugurated National Unfriend Day with an advisory about fairweather Facebook friends. Test them by asking for help with a move, he said. The people who respond are your friends. No one else. He capped off the proceedings with a public service announcement by […]
November 16 is National Button Day
National Button Day Today is National Button Day. How did it get its start and why should we celebrate it? We use this humble fastener every day but how much do we really know about it? National Button Day may never have existed were it not for Otto Lightner, publisher of Hobbies magazine, who democratized […]
November 15 is George Spelvin Day
Today is George Spelvin Day. Who is he, and why does he have his own day? He was “born” on November 15, 1886, and is still going strong. How is that possible? George Spelvin began as a pseudonym used in theatrical playbills to hide the fact that a performer was “doubling“—playing two roles in a play […]